Among the
most successful and prosperous freighters and merchants that supplied early Wyoming Territory were the Trabing
Brothers.
Born in Allendorf, Hesse-Cassel, Germany, along with their
blacksmith father, they arrived in America in August 1853. Augustus J. "Gus" was eleven
years of age and Charles was eight. They settled near Washington D.C. where
the boys worked from that early age with their father in a wagon factory. They
both learned the smithing trade.
In June 1863, August went to Washington D. C. and enlisted
with the U.S, Army’s Quartermaster Department. He served on guard duty at the
Civil War forts around Washington D. C. and as a blacksmith until 1865.
On Aug. 28,
1865, both brothers departed for the West, working for the Army as blacksmiths
and wagon repairers. Under Captain Gillis, they traveled with a quartermaster’s
train of 258 six-mule-team government wagons headed to Fort McPherson near
present-day North Platte, Nebraska. This expedition, led by Col. Brown of the
12th Missouri, was to drive the Sioux and Cheyenne from the valley of the
Republican River. During this time the Trabing brothers also acquired retail
experience, ordering and dispensing at the sutler store. The campaigns lasted
about five months.
After Army service,
they ranched near the fort and started a trading post in North Platte,
Nebraska. During a Sioux uprising, the store was burned down. Although
warriors ransacked and burned the store and ranch, according to August’s
Indian depredation claim filed decades later with the federal government, the
brothers rebuilt. On April 21, 1868 they were burned out a second time and some
of their men were killed, including a cousin who worked for them. They suffered
heavy losses in horses and cattle.
Selling
everything that was left, the brothers and Ulrike, August’s first wife, bought
some condemned government horses and wagons and moved west to Laramie, Wyoming
Territory, arriving on June 18, 1868, five weeks after the arrival of the
transcontinental railroad. They soon met J. C. Walters and the three went into
business. They began bidding for and getting freight contracts from Col. Benton
of the Union Pacific Railroad to supply cordwood and ties for the UP at Cooper
Lake Station west of Laramie and at Medicine Bow Station.
By 1869 the brothers
had several stores and contracts for supplying the railroad with wood. Starting
in July, they advertised for twenty-five or more teams and established a freighting
business between Rock Creek, Medicine Bow, and the Powder River country.
On July 28 and
29, 1869, Ulrika and August Trabing bought vacant property and buildings on
First Street in Laramie from W. B. Bent, land agent for the Union Pacific
Railroad. The purchase included The National Theater which stood on parts of
two lots. This one-story wooden
structure was located in the three-hundred block, across from the Union Pacific
freight depot and about two blocks south of the passenger station. August was a singer and may have
performed with some of the groups from time to time. The retail and wholesale store was
located at the corner of Garfield and South Second Street. They ventured opening a saloon and
theater for traveling vaudeville troupes coming in on the railroad. Eventually, the complex grew to include
three buildings: the warehouse, the store, and the stables.
The theater,
refurbished and painted blue, became known as “The Old Blue Front—” a place
that would figure in their story for the next thirty-seven years. Ulrika would
try running the business while August was filling the tie and wood contract at
Cooper Lake but she wasn’t successful.
Near this time,
coal was discovered at Carbon, Wyoming Territory, west of Medicine Bow. The
railroad no longer needed cordwood. That meant the Trabings had to find other
work. They decided to expand their Medicine Bow way station. They built a more
substantial store and started a freighting business from there as well.
On Dec. 6, 1869,
the Trabings leased their “Blue Front” building to their employee, George
Weiske. In March 1870 their building would be sub-leased to Albany County as a
temporary courthouse, since one had not yet been built. The Blue Front building
served as the courtroom for the first jury in the world impaneling both men and
women.
In late December
1869, the Trabings left Laramie on the railroad for Medicine Bow, which was
sixty miles to the northwest. They brought $35 worth of groceries—two wagons
full—which they bought from Edward Ivinson. This began their mercantile and
freighting career. At that time, Medicine Bow had a freight depot. Large
quantities of military supplies were shipped in by train. From there, they were
freighted north to Fort Fetterman on the North Platte near present Douglas,
Wyo., and later, to other forts farther north. Troops were also stationed at
Medicine Bow along with tie cutters and UP employees.
The road to Fort
Fetterman ran 83.5 miles through the Laramie Mountains and was often closed by
snow and flooding creeks in winter and spring. There were four hazardous river
crossings. Floods often washed out bridges, making travel unpredictable.
In 1874, weather
and flooded crossings delayed freighting until July. That month, one newspaper
noted the government had begun the season’s freighting to Fort Fetterman from
Medicine Bow, and guessed that “Trabings are doing more business and making
more money than any other house in the territory.”
By this time, the
Trabing businesses were growing steadily. They were freighting to Fort
Fetterman using their own teams and men, operating a growing grocery store at
Medicine Bow and remodeling part of their Laramie warehouse. Local newspapers
published their store advertisements frequently. A March 26, 1875, Laramie
newspaper describes their Medicine Bow operation “.. as one of the largest
store-rooms with warehouses, corrals, stables, blacksmith-shop and emigrant
houses attached to be found in Wyoming Territory. Sales last year exceeded
$50,000.” That would be more than $1.1 million in today’s dollars.
The Trabing
Brothers continued expanding, buying a ranch 17 miles north of Medicine Bow on
Shirley Rim. This cattle operation became the TB Ranch.
At Medicine Bow
and Cooper Lake Station, they opened small stores, supplying whatever their
freighters and tie cutters needed. Outlaws robbed them at Cooper Lake Station
in 1869, and were soon captured and jailed by Albany County Sheriff, Nathan K.
Boswell.
Starting in 1876,
General Crook’s military campaigns to push the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes onto
reservations and open their land to settlers began a series of intense series
battles with the tribes, later called the Great Sioux War. The conflicts
created more business for the Trabings and their freighters. They supplied the
military forts and soldiers with tons of food, hay, cordwood, rifles and
ammunition. Around that time, Trabing freighters were also hauling supplies to
mining camps and settlers near Medicine Bow.
Charles maintained the store in Medicine Bow. At the time, the location was a
strategic place for moving large quantities of merchandise from the rail head
over the hill to Fort Laramie, and to the southwest to “Medicine Bow Crossings
near Fort Halleck. They also transported goods north to Fort Fetterman. It is
possible this is the store, run by Charles, that, at the end of May 1877,
thieves broke into the store and robbed them of $2,000 to $3,000 worth of
goods. Some reports say it was also burned. ground.
I wrote a post
of the Bloomer women on another blog, which you may read HERE.
The daughter, Mary Jane Bloomer Stimpson, and
her husband, William Stimpson, bought out the old Overland Trail Stage Station
at “The Crossings” on the Medicine Bow River. After her husband’s death in
1876, the Trabing Brothers, who already
owned a store in Rock Creek, a Union Pacific Railroad town to the south,
bought the store from the widow.
In 1877, the
Trabing brothers expanded their Laramie store on First Street. It was
front-page Boomerang
news when, in 1883, they built a brand-new building on Second Street.
Both brothers had homes befitting prosperous entrepreneurs.
Charles built another store in what is now Johnson
County at the Crazy Woman Crossing of the Bozeman Trail. The store was
optimistically called "Trabing City." They chose this location for water, a change
of horses, and a source of supplies halfway between Fort Reno to the south and
the site of the former Fort Phil Kearny to the north. It was a day’s ride from each.
August Trabing
hired the young widow, Mary Jane Stimpson, to manage this new store. She, along
with her five-year-old daughter, arrived with two wagons of goods while it was
still being built. She operated the store from early 1878 until late 1879. According to Frank Grouard, the
robbers were the Big Nose George gang. They might have committed the crime as
he fled to Montana after the failed train derailment and murders of Deputy
Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and UPRR Special Detective “Tip” Vincents in August,
1878.
Due to its
remote location, that store was robbed multiple times by outlaw gangs. After
Fort McKinney moved to its second location, on Clear Creek near the future site
of Buffalo, Trabings decided to build a store closer to the protection of that
fort. Then, at the urging of Chares Buell, who started building the first
Occidental Hotel in 1880, August moved the Trabing store to his new location
where Clear Creek crosses the Bozeman Trail, which was not far from Fort
McKinney.
They leased their
Crazy Woman location to two families, Deacon and Walker, who later purchased
that store. Because the boundary of the original military reservation around
the fort allowed civilian establishments no closer than six miles, the place
was called Six Mile ranch.
When the size of
the reservation was reduced to where civilians could settle just two miles from
the fort, the Trabings freighted their buildings piece by piece into what would
become town of Buffalo, on Clear Creek, and built the first store in that location.
A bill of lading from that time shows the three Trabing stores operating during
that time, Laramie, Medicine Bow and "on Clear Creek near Ft.
McKinney." They sold their Buffalo store in 1882.
They opened a
business in Rawlins, where they had leased the old courthouse as a warehouse. They
obtained large freight contracts north to Fort Washakie and south to White
River in Colorado. During 1880 one such contract was sublet to J. W. Hugus and
Company of Rawlins, which failed to fulfill its contract due to weather. In
November 1883, the U.S. government sued August and Charles Trabing for $76,000
for the failure. The jury ruled in favor of the Trabing Brothers. Headlines
read, "Uncle Sam Beaten." Other contracts during this period included
hauling mining supplies to North Park, Colo., Cummins City (later Jelm), W.T., Douglas
Creek in southern Carbon County and other locations.
The ranch August
and Charles Trabing developed, and the string of stores in Buffalo, Rawlins,
Medicine Bow, Crazy Woman, and Laramie led to a successful freighting operation
to supply the large Trabing Brothers stores. At one time they had as many
as one hundred freighters in their employ. Trabing Brothers and the Trabing
Commercial Company became a prominent business in Laramie, Wyoming Territory.
Besides freighting and the mercantile business, the
brothers engaged in growing livestock on their ranch.
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Charles Trabing
|
In 1885, Charles was shipping cattle on
the Union Pacific to Omaha. At Sherman Hill, he injured his finger in
attempting to move one of the steers wedged in a car. By the time he arrived in
Omaha, the finger was swollen and painful. A physician cleaned and dressed the
injury. The infection grew worse, and on a public street he dropped dead from
apoplexy brought about by blood poisoning.
The size of the
Laramie store was doubled in 1891 when a second building to the north was
added. Those two buildings covered four lots at the NW corner of Second
and Garfield. The basement had a boiler, storerooms, and a reservoir for
the gas. Since the Trabing store was the only building with gas lights in
Laramie, it had to store the fuel for the lights. Most of the new addition
remained empty for a year.
 |
Augustus Trabing
|
August Trabing
moved to a penthouse atop the store in 1884. He was Laramie’s mayor for two
terms: 1886-1887 and 1889-90. He was elected to the Territorial Legislature in
1888. After Wyoming became a state, he became a Wyoming Senator in 1895.
In 1892, August Trabing
cut a connection in the firewall between his two buildings so the retail
operation now covered both. Wares included grain, wagons, housewares,
furniture, hardware, and groceries.
A recession in
1893 forced Trabing to go to an all cash basis, closing out all credit
accounts. The north building was rented to William Myers Dry Goods. The Odd
Fellows Hall rented the space above, while Trabing’s store continued in the
remaining building at 320 S. Second.
In the evening
of March 13, 1895, a fire started in the basement of the Trabing store.
It consumed both buildings, also their stable and warehouse behind on the alley,
resulting in losses of $50,000. One volunteer who tried to help put the
fire out, UW student, George Cordiner, then seventeen, died in the blaze when a
wall collapsed. The Trabings' two dogs died and their personal possessions were
lost. August Trablin was required to make an assignment for the benefit of
creditors. The business, however, recovered.
August and his second
wife, Hannah Trabing, stayed in Laramie and continued to invest on a smaller
scale in freighting, retail stores, and land development including the Pioneer
Canal.
In 1891, Congress
passed the Indian Depredations Act, which provided for recompense for losses
sustained from Indian Depredations. As authorized by the Act, Trabing applied
for compensation for his losses in Nebraska in 1868. At first, the Government
did not oppose his claim. After its approval by the Court of Claims, the
Attorney General, in a motion for rehearing, claimed that the court had no
jurisdiction to grant the claim. Claims were only available to citizens of the
United States. It was claimed by the Attorney General that Trabing's father had
not become a citizen of the United States prior to Trabing turning 18.
Therefore, the government argued that Trabing was not a citizen of the United
States and was ineligible for compensation.
Rather than following
the "liberal rule" applied by the Supreme Court, the Court of Claims
rejected Trabing's claim, ruling that Trabing's averment that his father had
voted for President Lincoln should be rejected as "hearsay;" that
Trabing's service in Nebraska was before it became a state and thus he did not
become a citizen until after the Indian depredation. The court additionally
suggested that Trabing's service as mayor and as a legislator was
"wrongful." The Court seemingly ignored that he had multiple time
taken an oath of allegiance to the United States and instead held that Trabing
"apparently chose to remain a subject of a foreign power." See
Trabing v. The United States, 32 Ct. Cl. 440 (1897). The wheels of righting
an injustice grind slowly. On January 26, 1907, Congress with the support of
Senator Warren and Representative Mondell finally corrected the injustice and
directed that allowed Trabing to prosecute his claim.
Unfortunately, the
ruling came too late. In 1906, Trabing was residing on his ranch,
"Wayside," about twenty miles north of Laramie near the headwaters of
the Upper Chug. The ranch today is remembered in the name of Wayside Ranch
Road. On the evening of October 26 while crossing the Laramie Mountains, his
team became stuck in a snowdrift. Unable to free the wagon, he cut the horses
loose and spent the night bedding in the snow beneath the wagon. The next
morning, he trudged a mile and a half to the F. S. King's ranch. Several weeks
later, he took his wife to Wisconsin for the winter. Upon his return later in
the month, he spent several days in his room in Laramie before returning to
Wayside.
On November 28, 1906, August
Trabing became quite ill. His son-in-law, William Bridger, rode about 4 1/2
miles to the King Ranch, which had the closest telephone. He called Dr. Stevens
and his brother-in-law, George Trabing. Dr. Stevens and George started right
away to August Trabing’s ranch. When they arrived at 2:00 a.m., the second of
the Trabing brothers had died.
At the time of his
death, August Trabing owned the Trabing Commercial Company and Wayside, the
Laramie-Walden, Laramie-Centennial, and Laramie-Sibylee stage lines.
I have two books
set in the region of Rock Creek and Medicine Bow. take place.
Lauren, Book 2 in the Rescue Me (Mail-order
Brides) series is largely set in Rock Creek, Wyoming Territory. There are two
mercantiles listed among Rock Creek’s 1878 businesses, one of them would have
been a Trabing Brothers store. Also, the scenes involving Big Nose George and
his gang attempting to derail the train just outside of Medicine Bow and the
ambush of Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and UPRR Special Agent Tip Vincents
are featured in chapters in this book. To read the book description and find
the purchase options, please CLICK HERE.
My Runaway
Brides of the West series book,
Ellie, the scene in a Medicine Bow mercantile
where Ellie meets Rand for the first time in person was probably the Trabing
Brothers store. To read the book description and find the purchase options,
please
CLICK HERE.
Sources:
http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/laramietrab.html
http://wyomingsteakhouse.com/the-trabing-fire/
https://www.wyoachs.com/people/2018/3/17/pioneer-trabing-brothers-build-a-wyoming-empire
https://sites.rootsweb.com/~wylaratp/html/_ox_cart_trip.html
https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/territorial-empire-trabings-and-their-freight
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